Islamic State threat to Russia is real – FSB

A senior security official has said that the threat coming from the so called Islamic State [also known as ISIS, or ISIL] was absolutely real for Russia and its neighbors.

“The threat from ISIS is real because quite a lot of citizens
from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization(SCO) are taking part
in its activities,” deputy director of Russia’s Federal
Security Service told reporters Friday after a session of the
SCO’s regional anti-terror body.

General Sergey Smirnov added that law enforcement agencies
possessed information on about 1,700 Russian citizens fighting in
Iraq on the side of Sunni extremists. “The danger of ISIS is also
in their ability to infiltrate other terrorist groups,” he added.
In particular, the terrorists have demonstrated interest in the
Imarat Caucasus group and some of its leaders have already
pledged loyalty to ISIS, Smirnov said.

Officials in Tajikistan have estimated the number of the Central
Asian country’s citizens fighting on ISIS’s side at about 300,
the Russian general said. The overall number of people from
post-Soviet Central Asian republics who are fighting for ISIS
could be up to 4,000, he added, referring to data provided by the
International Research Group for Crisis Regions.

Members of the SCO’s regional anti-terror body have agreed to
monitor the movement of ISIS terrorists in their states and
jointly thwart their activities, the Russian security official
added. Formed in 2001, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
consists of Russia, China, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and
Kyrgyzstan. Belarus, Afghanistan, India, Iran, Pakistan and
Mongolia hold observer statuses in the organization.

In December, the Russian government proscribed the Islamic State
as a terrorist organization, outlawing membership or any support
for it under threat of criminal prosecution. In addition, the
Russian Foreign Ministry called upon all nations to recognize
ISIS and its fellow jihadist militia, the Al-Nusra Front, as
terrorist groups, noting that such a step would be supported by
UN Security Council resolutions.

In late March, a major Russian Muslim group issued a fatwa
against ISIS, announcing that all of its members were enemies of
Islam and calling for their punishment as criminals.

Also last month, the head of Russia’s State Security Council,
Nikolay Patrushev, called on the international community to
abandon double standards on terrorism and start fighting the
threat in line with universally-recognized norms of international
law.

Patrushev told reporters that he and other Russian officials
preferred to use the term “Islamic State” in quotation marks to
avoid insults to true Muslims who, in his view, had no relation
to terrorists and extremists. For the same reason he called on
people to refer to it by its original name – the Islamic State of
Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL.